Keeping the current scenario in mind, it should be more than 1 merit to be eligible for bounties. Practically, it the bounty programs that decide minimum eligibility to participate. Some require just a user to post links about their projects everywhere (FB , Twitter or even this forum). Those programs do not care much about the knowledge or contribution of the members on this forum. Till the demand for such users is there, we will not see spam removed from bitcointalk completely.

I think there are a lot of accounts being registered on the forum and being left inactive. You can see many such accounts registered years before without a single post. They are not posting anything here and thus not the cause of spam. May be they are aging the accounts for use in future.

And, you are right about the possible limitations or loopholes for the suggestions I gave.

Some possible solution for this :

1) Asking for email verification. Will reduce registration with bots.

2) Deleting old accounts with no activity.

3) IP restrictions being made more tough.

Problem with these steps is that it will affect genuine users registering on the forum as well.

Actually, I have seen more such tasks on the same site after I posted this. This seems something out of the control of the forum staff now.

Here is my opinion about these two:

1) I agree that this happens but I am strictly against this. This forum has members from all over the world and thus the English of some members will be bad in comparison to native speakers. Still, if his content has information and value, we should appreciate it.

2) Lazy is also good sometimes as they will find some easy ways to get merits (not merit abuse).

If I get your suggestion correctly, you mean ranking up based on number of posts. So basically, you want ranking up based on activity only just as it was before the merit system. I do not think that is ever going to happen. Admin did ask for suggestions to control the spam on the forum and then introduced this merit system here. So, you want all those suggestions and his hard work to go in vain now.

In my opinion, it has encouraged new members to post good content. But we need more restrictions for guys spamming this forum as they are still doing the same.

I hope no competitor will do this now because the forum staff does not care about such cases or is not in position to confirm the abuse as it is outside the forum. And in such a case, who would like to pay to give free bumps (more exposure) to their campaigns.

I like the way you gave it a cool name unlike other who call it negative merits. However, it is not required because:

1) The power to punish should be on responsible hands only. Giving it to everyone will cause a lot of problems.

2) Some will start taking personal revenge.

3) It is already hard to rank up, we do not need it to be more difficult.

4) More work for moderators.

5) We should make rules simple.

6) It will cause a lot of problems in signature campaigns that require some earned merits.

7) Some may threat negative action and demand money for it.

Some briefs for you:

1) You need posts in different activity periods. One activity period is for 14 days, so you can get maximum 14 activity points in one period.

2) If you make more than 14, it will be credited in next period provided you make at least one post in that period.

3) You also need merits to rank up (not for your next rank up which is junior member and needs no merits).

Updated with some new giveaways. Also, if you notice a new one, do add as comment. Thanks

Hypothetical question: A member reports some major abuse going on the forum by another member and starts receiving threats on his personal contact details. Will the forum protect the first member in this case ?

The solution you guys are suggesting here is that the replies made by newbies should be ignored. If that is implemented, these guys will start another campaign asking junior members or above to bump the thread.

In case the thread in question is able to get away with this even after being reported, he will have a good laugh. It will encourage him to do this on large scale or even other thread owners will do the same. These bumps may seem minor violation to some but these expose new members to such scam projects. Since , this is being done through this forum, it is the responsibility of the staff to tackle this.

Thread in question:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2275080.0

They have created a listing on a micro job site to bump their thread.

Proofs:





The link in second image is https://goo.gl/rVtz5T which points to above thread. Current task status in image 1 is above 200 which means that more than 200 replies on that threads are paid bumps. If you check posts there, most replies are from new accounts and some even raised doubts on that thread.

Do you meant to say that an account which is banned from posting vecause of evil IP, will work normal on another clean IP ? I do not think this is possible, once it is disabled, it will work only after paying the required fees, otherwise what is the point in disabling the posting. I hope someone from staff can clarify this.

I see that most of the earlier compilations are not updated, hence this thread. If you are in need of merits, you can apply in following giveaways:

1) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3199334.0

Get merits for reporting celebs involved with crypto. Most celebes are already listed but see if you can find more.

2) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3055943.0

Merit giveaway from the same member. You get merits for quoting your helpful posts.

3) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3544990.0

You just have to ask the OP to review your past posts. 114 merits available.

4) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3041155.0

Recent replies have got no merits but OP has not closed it yet.

5) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2971165.0

You get merits her for reporting abuse of forum rules.

6) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3197152.0

Merit giveaway only for Indian members.

7) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3108981.0

You ca apply here if you are 1-2 merits short for next rank.

I will update this with more threads. Good luck applying.

I am not in favor of restrictions for new members. Just think of a situation comes to this forum through some search engine query and then registers here and makes his first post. Now if your suggestion is implemented, his post will not get approved instantly and he might leave the forum and look for alternatives.

It is a good suggestion and may tackle the spam but we also need to keep in the mind that the user experience of a genuine member should not be affected because of this.

Should I sell my house or take a loan for investing in bitcoins ?

The prices of Bitcoins are very volatile. If you are thinking about selling your house or taking a loan for investing in Bitcoins, this is not a good idea. If the price drops drastically, you will be in huge financial crisis. The prices of Bitcoins reduce by even more than 30-40% in single day. If you have invested borrowed money in Bitcoins, this can be very stressful. On the other hand, if you have invested only a fraction of your savings, it will not be a huge deal. Only invest the amount that you are ready to lose.

There are some sort of automation here. For instance, in case a user is posting from an IP that has been used for registering multiple accounts, he will be stopped from making new posts. He has to pay some bitcoins to be able to post again.

Some other features might be implemented like automatic detection of copied content with the help of copyscape. I am not sure how hard it is to do the required coding for this to function.

I agree to this. This is a strong indication of the fact that how the interests of people are changing with time and alt coins are getting more popular. I am also concerned about those fraud projects popping up every day as some new investors might get affected by them.

But there are coins that are giving better returns in comparison to bitcoins. Most of the people are concerned about returns only and they are not loyal to any coin, even if it is the bitcoin with which all this crypto started.

They are mostly new investors who heard people making millions with bitcoins and invested without doing any research on the best tie to enter, using stop loss. Now when they see that prices decrease as well and on some instances to more than 20% in a day, they start panicking.


Actually, the people who make huge money with investment options like bitcoins are just profiting on the panic of majority only. If no one panics, we will not see such volatility at all.